Subscribe to kbbreview

Lida Cucina enters administration

Berkshire-based kitchen retail showroom Lida Cucina has entered administration and will cease trading, it has been revealed.

The company, which sells the Charles Yorke and Pedini brands, entered administration on November 13 and has appointed practitioners from KRE Corporate Recovery in Reading to handle the insolvency process.

Management has blamed its insolvency on general weakness in the higher end of the market, partly caused by uncertainty surrounding Brexit, combined with protracted payment terms imposed by commercial clients, resulting in high levels of creditor pressure.

“We have retained a small proportion of the company’s workforce in order to complete select projects and, once these have been finalised, the company will cease to trade,” KRE said in a statement.

Commenting on the news, kbbreview columnist and owner of Rugby Fitted Kitchens Trevor Scott said: “I surmise that somewhere along the line, contract terms regarding invoice payments with many of its developer clients had not been nailed down well enough and developers had been slow in getting their chequebooks out.

“This was OK, but only in the sense it was getting away with it, thanks to a constant flow of orders – until the orders slowed down, and cash-flow problems caught up and bit it.

“This is a classic scenario within the contract/developer marketplace – especially when dealing with the big blue-chips, whose directors are often bonus-incentivised around how much money they can save by screwing over subcontractors.

“The real surprise to me was it winning the Charles Yorke contract for supplying developers, as CY is a wholly owned subsidiary of Symphony Group, which is, of course, very strong in the contracts market.

“Although we don’t work in London ourselves, Nobilia GB – a contracts market agent for Nobilia in the UK – certainly does, and it is not reporting any kind of a slowdown and is busier than ever.

“This might be a price-point issue though, where the very high-end part of the market, which without a doubt Lida Cucina and Charles Yorke operate in, is experiencing a bit of a slowdown.”